This report finds that since 2001 it has cost the Australian taxpayer more than $500,000 per person to process fewer than 1700 asylum seekers in Nauru, Manus and Christmas Island. By comparison, the latest estimate from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship suggests that the cost of holding asylum seekers in a mainland Australian detention centre is only 3.5% of the running costs of the Pacific Solution.

The report argues that the Pacific Solution has squandered $1 billion of taxpayers' money, exacerbated mental illness of refugees and evades independent or parliament scrutiny.